


Chemical Reaction

by jackelgull



Category: The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-28
Updated: 2017-04-28
Packaged: 2018-10-24 20:00:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10748787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jackelgull/pseuds/jackelgull
Summary: It begins with an offer to a sixteen year old with big secrets. It somehow comes to the end of the world. In hindsight, Clint should've seen this coming.





	Chemical Reaction

**Author's Note:**

> "The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed."  
> -Carl Jung

Barton did not usually see action in the Himalayas - while SHIELD was supposedly an international organization with an international command structure, most of the time it functioned as a coalition of national organizations occasionally pursuing the same interest, and the American branch of SHIELD generally left the Chinese branch to pursue strategic goals in the Himalayas. But this mission was different - it potentially involved super soldier serum in the hands of Indian drug lords shipping to Chinese markets, and no way in hell were the Chinese to be trusted with that.  


So Fury shipped Barton off to these god forsaken mountains and told him to dig quietly. And dig Barton did. People seemed to assume that he was merely the soldier to the Black Widow’s spy, and he liked to let them think that. But in truth he and Black Widow worked because they were both a master of espionage in their respective skill sets. The Black Widow specialized in interpersonal espionage in the art of working the target for intelligence, of breaking down the barriers and earning trust. She was the flame and all moths were drawn to it at their peril. Barton’s skill set was different. He was the invisible man, the jogger down the street, the veteran getting drinks by the bar. He got in place, shot the target, then got out, and nobody would recall he’d been there. Clint would never be as good at working a target as Natasha, but he could move stealthily through a joint and snoop around about as well.  


He managed to pick some things up in the guise of James Cooper, a former US marine who served in Afghanistan and now soldier of fortune come on hard times who had come to India because he’d heard “Things were cheaper and finding jobs easier for people of my skill set, if you know what I mean”. There was some suspicion about what an American was doing in India, but Clint smiled like a soldier turned thug, told stories like a soldier turned thug, even walked like a soldier turned thug, so nobody bothered asking questions, and instead enthusiastically took to the task of “Indianizing” him by forcing him to watch a lot of cricket with them.  
It took him a few drinks, a few ass kickings to earn respect, and whole lot of male bonding through sexual harassment and calling each other gay before he was offered a spot in the operation. One interview with the boss, a few days getting to know the vents, and one breakin to where all the important information was kept later, and Clint was ready to blow the joint. He knew this was not what Fury ordered him to do - that technically his mission was complete with the retrieval of this information and the knowledge that no these drug dealers didn’t have any kind of super soldier compound, just a new round of performance enhancing drugs for illegal fight rings, but there was also human trafficking going on here too. Apparently these guys decided that it wasn’t enough to deliver the drugs, they needed to provide the fighters too. Two dozen kids, ages twelve to sixteen are stored here. If Natasha was with him, or if Phil was still his handler, he might’ve made some kind of joke about tributes and the hunger games, but that didn’t seem appropriate under these circumstances.  


Clint knows what Nick Fury will tell him- something about the bigger picture and the insignificance of twenty four lives in the face of SHIELD’s mission. Well,perhaps not quite phrased like that, Nick Fury for all his sharp edges is not that unfeeling.  
Clint sets up explosives all over the smuggler’s compound, mixing in some flash grenades and noise makers for maximum confusion. The resulting chaos should give him thirty minutes to get in, find the children and get out. But first, he needs to find someone with higher security clearance then Cooper, someone whose keycard could open the doors to the cages the kids are in. So before he sets off the alarms, he staggers to one of the guards in the hallway as if drunk, stumbles, using the opportunity to draw his knife, then embraces the guard with one arm, and uses the other to stab him in the heart, a quick quiet murder. He then places the man’s arm over his shoulder and drags him to the bathroom, a pantomime of a concerned friend helping a drunk man out. He wonders if there’s some kind of symbolism in this, an act of murder wrapped up in an act of friendship. He kills the thought, yanks the knife out of the man’s heart, then shoves the corpse into a bathroom stall. He then swipes the man’s identification card and puts it in his pocket.  


It’s a riskier plan then he usually goes with. Then again, usually Clint would have back up - Natasha and a whole SHIELD squad, before attempting an op like this, but Clint has only gone on solo missions since New York. He does not feel ready to be with other people yet. As far as he knows, Loki might’ve left some instructions engraved in his head. He is a ticking time bomb.  


Clint sets of the alarms, and as predicted, the base springs to life to find the intruders, and the corridors empty. Clint rushes to the very center of the building, no one even noticing him in their rush to get to the commotion.  


Clint finds the children in a small white room, and they’re all huddled in and scared and it's so easy to forget that they’re technically teenagers. They look so young, or maybe it's the cruelty of the situation, something even adults shouldn’t have to go through that emphasizes innocence. In their eyes he sees family and love and the all problems those bring, and that doesn’t belong in this fortress in the mountains that might as well be at the end of the world, the edge of life and death.  
He knows he probably should do a thorough headcount, but the drug lord’s underlings would be coming back soon, and he needed those kids to get to the exit he had prepared and they needed to get there yesterday. He uses his stolen key card to open the cell then flashes his SHIELD badge, and tells them to follow him if they want to go home. He’s almost relieved when they follow him. It means they’ve still retained a little trust. He leads them down an empty hallway to a manhole cover in the base. He leads the children down into the darkness.  


The sewer water is disgusting, there isn’t enough light, and the rats are damn annoying, and he swears when this mission is over he will get a rat as a pet just so he can cook and eat it for the transgressions of its brethren in the Himalayas.In other words it's a regular damn sewer.  
The goons are coming in hot and heavy now, and it is a matter of minutes before the cells are too flooded to handle effectively, but fuck if Clint’s going to leave anyone behind so he asks if anyone isn’t there.  


A girl of fourteen speaks up. She says, “Cyril is in solitary confinement for biting one of the guards”  
There’s a story in her hunched shoulders and downcast gaze that makes his blood boil, but he reminds himself that he’s not here for that. Still, he will not feel bad for the bullets he has to use. And maybe he will use more of them than he strictly needs to.  
He tells the children to leave and not look back, and calls in his current handler, some agent whose name starts with an M to bring transport for a bunch of children.  
He calls in SHIELD to bring transport for twenty four children. The agent taking the request does not sound amused.  


“You have gone far beyond the parameters of this mission, agent Barton.”  


“Oh, and one of those kids is in solitary confinement, I’m planning on getting him out too”.  


The agent goes silent for a full minute on the comm before sighing and saying, “There’s no threat I can make to dissuade you from this course of action is there?”  


“Nope.”  


“And if I insist on not bringing in the transports, you’re going to give up your own to rescue those kids, aren’t you?”  


“Yes.”  


“Fuck you man, I don’t know how Coulson did it”, at the mention of Coulson, Clint felt his skin crawl. Even though there was no venom or mockery intended in the words, it still felt wrong to Clint to begin the process of finding the humor in Coulson’s life. That felt like burying him all over again.  


“He knew to trust his field agents, a lesson I’m sorry the rest of SHIELD’s handlers have not yet learned” Clint snapped, his tone flatter than he’d intended.  


“I’ll leave it to Fury to chew you out for this, then,” the handler said puzzled at what had brought this hostility on.  


Clint then switches his attention to the oldest child of the group, a sixteen almost seventeen year old boy.  


“Lead them out of here, SHIELD helicopters will take all of you home safely.”  


“What about you?” The boy asks.  


“I can take care of myself. My work here isn’t done.”  


Solitary confinement is further down the hall from the room where he found the children. He’s not sure what he expected when he found Cyril - but it’s certainly not this. The boy’s hands and feet are in chains and there are bruises and scars and whip marks all over his body, but a feral light of hatred is burning in his eyes. Clint’s more reminded of a cornered snake than a captured teen, and he knows there’s a problem. There’s no way in hell this kid will trust him. He might be convinced to escape this facility with him, but a kid like this - he wouldn’t trust nice. He’d be convinced there’s some ulterior motive in rescuing him - and taking him to SHIELD in a helicopter with no escape route would just make him cagier, might convince the kid to take his chances in the Himalayas. But that is a bridge he will have to cross when he gets to it.  


Clint says, “kid, there’s a bunch of goons on my tail and i could really use a second gun to distract them. You up to the task?”  


“What makes you think I won’t shoot you?” The kid says, a calculated look in his eyes. This was a show of strength a probe to determine whether Barton was cannon fodder or a potentially useful ally. It belonged on the face of a hard bitten professional, not a sixteen year old, though Barton had been alive long enough to realize in some cases, those were the same thing.  


He gives those feral eyes his hardest flintiest look, the look he channeled when he offered the Black Widow a chance to join or die, the look Phil Coulson gave him in prison, the look that said, “boy, you think you’re tough? You’re just a little bitch to me. I own you, you think you’re hot stuff, forged in fire and all that shit? Well, i am the fire, and i can and will burn you unless you show me you’re worth not burning”.  


“Because i’m guessing you hate them more than you hate me, and because if you train a gun on me, it will be the last thing you do.”  


The boys shoulders loosen a little. Something in barton’s gaze must have reassured him because the kid even smiled a little.  


“I wasn’t exactly trained for this shit back where i come from. I know you’re supposed to point the barrel at the enemy and pull the trigger, but i have no fucking clue how to reload.”  


Clint cuts him free and hand him a glock l7.  


“One round should be enough to finish the job.”  


“Oh is that what she said” the boy joked, handling the gun with the natural ease of a pro. Clint suspects he’s lying to him about not being able to handle a gun, but he will allow him his secrets.  


Clint rolls his eyes, “She said jokes really? So kid, do you have some kind of melee weapon on you in case this goes to close quarters?”  


The boy proudly displayed an obsidian knife.  


“They didn’t take this from you?”  
The kid clutched the knife like it was just it and him against the world .

“They didn’t think it mattered”.  


“Alright kid buy me five minutes” Clint said while using a grappling hook rappel up to the ceiling. As Clint places the explosive charges to create an opening he noticed the battle that had just begun below. The kid is a good shot, and three goons were already dead at his hands. The rest have drawn their pistols and are shooting wildly. Clint is seriously worried about this kid now. He reaches into his his pocket to tosses out a grenade into the midst of the crowd. The mass of goons part like ripples after a stone had been thrown in a lake. Except of course, this was a grenade, and when it went off, five enemies were down for the count.  


What happens next chills Clint to the bone. Cyril launches into goons who are in melee range with the range, and he’s good. Not as in “this kid learned to use the knife well on these mean streets” good, but as in “Holy shit, I think I’ve seen Nat use these moves before” good. There’s no wasted movement, no attempts to go for anything other than the guts, neck or heart, the kid moves like a fucking figure skater of murder. But the Red Room was a Russian program and for women only, so it couldn’t be them. That doesn’t mean this wasn’t some sort of sister or maybe brother would be the better word, organization. Clint reminds himself this is a revelation whose implications he can worry about later and continues to plant explosives to create an opening.  


When finished, he climbs down. The crowd of goons has thinned a little, but the kid is obviously not doing alright. He’s panting heavily and his reflexes are slowing.  
“Hey kid, let’s blow this joint” Bart says, before grabbing a hold of the kid and using the grappling hook to get through the rooftop.  
The automatic weapons mounted on the rooftop begin firing. Barton grabs the kid’s hand and runs them down the path Clint has calculated in his head based on trajectory and bullet speed.  


By the time they’ve run to relative safety, the other kids have already left. There is just one chopper left waiting. As they drew closer the kid halted. He was clearly debating running away, Clint could see it in his eyes. Clint maintains a strong grip on his arm and feels the tension coiling tightly beneath the skin and muscle.  


“What your thinking, just don’t” Clint said.  


“What, you’ll break my legs if I try running away?”  


“Jesus Christ kid, I’m one of the good guys.”  


“Good guy does not necessarily mean good”.  


“Fair enough”, Clint concedes, “Look kid, I don’t care how good you think you are, you are 10,000 feet above sea level without supplies. I didn’t bust you out so you could freeze to death.”  


“Yet you’re taking me on a helicopter to crash to my death”.  


Clint laughs, half genuine amusement that this kid who he has seen charge into a cluster of a dozen men with nothing more than a knife in his hand is afraid of heights, half emotional manipulation to convince the kid to get on the helicopter in some sort of fit of defiance.  


“You’re seriously afraid of flying?”  


“Me and planes have a bad history,” the kid says defensively. He may be expertly trained but he was still a teenager.  


“What if we fly low to the ground? Also if you have a preferred location that you want me to drop you off rather than the SHIELD base we’re going to, well, I would try to swing it. I’m used to getting yelled at.”  


The kid stares at him hard, trying to gauge his sincerity. He takes it all in - the angles of Clint’s face, the faint scars near his eyes, Clint’s reassuring smile, before nodding once and heading towards the helicopter. It does not feel like trust. It is more like a snake uncoiling.  


“I don’t really have a home to go back to” the kid says, “so I suppose I’ll go with you.”  
Just before entering the helicopter, the kid stops.  


“I just realized we were never introduced,” he says, holding out his hand to Clint like they were college roommates meeting for the first time, and had not spent the past hour fleeing captivity from human traffickers, “my name is Cyril.”  


It’s the first time Clint feels like he’s dealing with a person and not a dangerous creature.  


Clint takes the hand and shakes it. He introduces himself, “My name is Clint Barton. Most people call me Hawk Eye”.  
The plane ride is tense and silent. Cyril is crossing his arms like he’s expecting Clint to start interrogating him with some uncomfortable questions, and Clint has some things he wants to know but isn’t sure how to ask without breaking the fragile truce they have between them.  


Clint breaks the silence with a statement, “You could have left at any time. You didn’t need me to break you out of that damn prison.”  


Cyril merely raises his eyebrows and asks, “What makes you think that?”  


“I saw your little display with the knife back when we were fighting for our lives. Those are the moves of a professional. And if you’ve got that down, you’ve got breaking out of a prison down.”  


“Alone, I probably could have escaped” Cyril acknowledges coolly, giving little away, but Clint has spent enough time around the Black Widow to hear the “I wanted to escape with everyone” in there.  


He nods, “Even for me, busting out twenty plus kids from inside the prison would be tough. What was your game plan?”  


The kid looks surprised, then unsure of himself. Finally the kid says, “On route to the destination. I heard the guards talking and the convoy to escort fighters are lightly guarded, four to five guards max. After taking the guards out, I’d drive to a safe house I have in China and let the kids hang out there while I try to find honest authorities to sort everything out.”  


Clint blinked. It was not the sort of plan he expected from a professional. It had more heart than brains, especially since hiding twenty four kids was easier said than done, and while the human trafficking and drug ring was only mid level, and probably didn’t have massive pull, there were plenty of cops corrupt enough to turn in twenty four kids for cash. And for a kid this age - well Clint didn’t want to doubt his skills, but he knew that he couldn’t have been in the field for more than three years, not enough time to amass a large number of personal safe houses. Once he brought the kids to this one, it would no longer be safe. Add onto the fact he’d fought a guard for one of his cell mates, and Barton was seeing the profile of a kid with a rough past who wanted to do right by people. Perfect SHIELD material. Time to reel him in.  


“That’s a shitty plan. For one thing without proper ids it’d be too risky to let those kids out of a house and twenty four kids cooped up in one house for months is a recipe for disaster.”  


“Are you seriously suggesting I can’t create a fake id in China? I think I should feel a little insulted.”  


“One absolutely. Twenty four? I think someone would notice that. Let’s not forget about feeding them, or finding them jobs to feed themselves while you search for someway to take them home.”  


“And your point is what? Just leave them behind to die?”  


It’s time to go in for the kill Clint decides.  


“No my point is that you would have no good options. And that if you had an organization behind you, you would”.  


“An organization like SHIELD?” The kid asks, something strange worming its way in his tone.  


“Well, since we’re on the topic-”  


The kid interrupts, “Clint, I’m giving this warning to you because I genuinely like you - but if you suggest I jon SHIELD, I’m gonna throw my knife at you then jump out of this helicopter, because I honestly feel safer falling from five hundred feet off the ground then I would in Shield’s hands.”  


The kid has drawn his knife, clutching it so tightly his knuckles are white. He is shaking.  


For the first time Clint feels like he’s lost control of the conversation. He expected distrust, ridicule and nervousness - he didn’t expect this fear. And not just any fear, but the kind that is almost like a living thing itself, residing in your skin waiting for the right trigger to take over. Clint recognizes it because he’s seen it in himself. He’s never been good with crowds, but after Loki, it has gotten worse. On his worst days, he feels the urge to hand out explosives like they are candy and it is Halloween and run, run until all that’s left is distance because Clint Barton is nothing but an arrow with a target and what good is an arrow without distance?  


This is of course on the long list of things Clint Barton does not talk about.  


“Calm down kid, you don’t have to go to SHIELD if you don’t want to. Now just calm down”, Clint begins, trying to make his voice low and soothing like he vaguely remembers his mother doing before she was too beaten down to do more than exist.  
After some time the calming technique takes effect and Cyril’s pupils are no longer dilated, nor are his hands shaking.  


“I’m sorry about that” Cyril says, “but I’m serious. I won’t join SHIELD under any circumstances.  


“Why?”  


“You were the guy who took down the Helicarrier, weren’t you?” The kid asks in a jarring non sequitur.  


Clint’s part in Loki’s invasion is common knowledge. Without Loki to prosecute, the government and a public hungry for blood decided to put Clint on trial. It went all the way to the Supreme Court, where it was decided 5-4, that mind control limited Clint’s culpability, and that according to the statements given by Nick Fury and Natasha Romanoff, Clint had, to the best of his ability, resisted Loki’s control. It still makes Clint uncomfortable to be recognized.  


“Yes and?”  


“Does it make you feel any better that SHIELD has Loki’s scepter?”  


No, no it doesn’t Clint. The violation Clint feels from Loki’s mind control, the dislocation and feeling like a stranger in his own skin, those are things he’d feel even if his mind control had been to save the world and not end it.  


Clint knows that as a government assassin, he’s the last person how should be talking about lines, but Clint figures there are different kinds of lines - line drawn in the sand that are fluid and circumstance driven, lines in concrete that are less so, but for Clint, mind control is a line drawn in vibranium.  


“There is power that has no right hands” Clint says softly.  


“I have access to something like Loki’s scepter. I don't trust SHIELD to not abuse it. And if I join SHIELD, the odds of them finding out I have access to this increases. I’d rather not see what they end up doing with it.”  


Clint nods his head. SHIELD is a large organization and not everyone in it can be trusted to draw the lines in the right places. Some might argue there are no right places to draw the line, that the world of right and wrong is just shifting sands and shadows. And Fury might be the final say on SHIELD, but he can hardly be counted on as a bastion of values. Clint will never know one hundred percent how well he knows Fury - everything he sees might be a cover for something else, and the moments he sees through one cover he might be looking at another cover, but Clint believes that beneath Fury’s cloak of secrets is a man who draws lines. Still, Fury is arrogant, and usually Clint chalked that up to cover and need, but after Loki stole the tesseract, Clint isn’t inclined to believe Fury can handle what he claims he can handle.  


“Still kid, how are you planning on protecting what you have alone?”  


“By keeping the circle small. Currently there are two people alive who know what I know. Joining SHIELD would jeopardize that security.”  


“I think you should come live with me.”  


“What?!” Cyril exclaims.  


“Just in case something happens and someone kidnaps you to get what you have, you’d benefit from someone close by who knows to look for you.”  


“I told you, only two people know what I know, and one of them is me.”  


“Even if we assume the other person is trustworthy, there must be more people who know enough. Are you sure all of them won’t talk to the wrong people?”  


“No you’re right,” Cyril says, then stares at the floor with a contemplative look on his face. He looks up and says, “Well then, I suppose we’re roommates.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to begin by thanking Wilde Child. She was just as excited for this as I was. Without her, I might've given up halfway through this chapter. I hope this was worth being excited over. I tried my best to create an interesting OC worthy of being adopted by Clint.


End file.
